Western Digital 500GB WD Blue 3D NAND Internal PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to 560 MB/s - WDS500G2B0A, Solid State Drive

Great upgrade for my Win7 Lenovo Thinkpad E530-C, which with a standard 260GB hard drive. It has only 4GB RAM and was glacially slow trying to run Office 2016, backups, Windows updates, etc. First the good news: with SSD installed, I'm seeing the following performance gains: Boot up: <1 minute, down from 3-4 minutes. Shut down: 30 seconds, down from 3-4 minutes, more if Windows updates were installing. Start MS Word: 5 seconds, down from 2 minutes Start MS Excel: 5 seconds, down from 1+ minutes Start MS Access: 5 seconds, down from 2+ minutes Start MS Outlook: 7 seconds + mail server sync, down from 2+ minutes Photos: Instant load of 4-6 MB photo files, 30-150 MB video clips in Windows Live Photo Gallery - using Next/Prev arrow controls is instantaneous also. Stream video from Youtube, Amazon Prime, etc. also load and start noticeably quicker, I assume due to much faster buffering. Windows updates: These download and install in about 20% of the time with the SSD. One day after install, I went to shutdown and it downloaded and started to install 8 Win updates. Both download and install after next startup took only a minute or two. Now the downside: Cloning HDD to the SSD took much longer and was more confusing than it should have been, mostly due to rather sketchy instructions on WD site re the Acronis True Image WD Edition software provide for cloning. For some reason, you can't install the ATI WD version unless you already have a WD or Sandisk storage device attached--otherwise it stops the install. Fortunately I had a blank Sandisk Cruzer USB drive handy -- stuck one in and voila, ATI installed. ATI has two clone modes--automatic (recommended) and manual. Automatic clones all your existing partitions, and if you're installing an SSD with more capacity than your old HDD--I was adding a 500GB SSD vs my old 260GB--the automatic option proportionately increases all HDD partitions when cloning. I did not want my 30 GB Recovery partition blowing up to over 60 GB, so I went back and selected the manual cloning option, which allowed me to specify just enough space for the remaining files. It also let me move the recovery partition to the "end" of the partition sequence on the disk, which allowed the C: partition, where all the files go, to use all the newly available space. My C drive went from about 228 GB to 466 GB with the SSD. Awesome. Time to prep and clone the drive: 3.5 hours to do a total Windows backup to external HDD 1+ hours fiddling with the Acronis install 3.5 hours to clone the drive <1 hour to open PC, remove HDD, install SSD, close PC. Total time: between 8.5 and 9.0 hours, most of it just waiting for stuff to happen. Your time may vary...I'm no pc hardware expert, although I know a bit and can follow instructions. The Acronis software interface is a little light on instructions and status updates both while setting up the clone and while cloning was proceeding. For example, the cloning status screen has a field for estimated time remaining, but it said "Estimating time remaining" when the cloning began, and it never updated with an actual time remaining. From what I've heard from others who've done SSD cloning and installs using other brands, my experience was typical. At least the WD SDD was recognized at the first boot after installation. I was forewarned to have another PC or tablet handy to access the web to get help if there was any incompatibility issue or BIOS problem. Most users would have to clone using a USB-to-SATA cable (I bought this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HJZJI84/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) Most laptops have at least one USB 3 port--be sure to use that to speed the cloning up a bit. SSD is a great way to boost performance in an older laptop. This WD Blue is highly rated both on Amazon and other sites. I'm very pleased with it so far, despite the time involved in setting it up--it's well worth the trouble.

You can damn sure install windows 7!!! Don't let anyone fool you!!! You just can't clone. You have to do a fresh install of windows 7 and it works fine. WD SSD's have TRIM support, amungst other things. It pretty much means you can run win 7 off of their SSD's. I've had it installed for over a month and so far so good. Pc used for video and audio editing/recording. Also used for gaming.. I have an hp p-1010 desktop that I bought in 2011 for 800$ brand new. I upgraded to an AMD Phenom X6 1065T six core 2.9ghz, A 2gb EVGA Nvidia GeForce gtx 750 Ti and 4x8gb RAM sticks. It's a great pc, I've rarely had a problem, if at all and if so it was probably my fault. It runs smoothly to this day, Startup time is about 2 minutes and the HDD I have now (500gb WD) runs very slow at only 50 some mgbs read/write. But It runs mostly any game as of 2016 anything newer usually maxes out my system but will still run it. I just don't like maxing out my system for hours while I play a game. Anyway I decided to finally upgrade. Bought the 500gb Solid State Drive to run my OS only. And I bought the 1tb for installating games/programs. I am extremely happy I did! Startup time is now about 10 seconds and my read/write speeds are significantly higher, 250mbps and could be more if my motherboard was 6gb sata. I'm not sure what mine is. Running windows 7 ultimate, the os uses all of my 32gb RAM and runs much more lighter than win 10. 10 runs heavy, at idle its around 15 to 25% while 7 runs around 5% at idle. At first I Installed windows 10 fresh because of everything I read about 7 not being able to run on an ssd. È8i%^+awww 7 ess 6 0îűInstallation of the ssd was very easy. I didn't want to switch to windows 10 but I did. And HATED it!!!! And you can't turn off windows update, which killed me lol so I did more research and found out that you actually can run win 7 on an ssd as long as said ssd supports TRIM. Still, an insane improvement. Almost instant navigation. Programs open in 2 Seconds. And my gaming experience is significantly higher, I can max out my graphics settings while gaming and it looks awesome.

I opted to convert my 500gb 7200 rpm hard drive in my 5 year old Dell 3647 computer to a SSD drive. The computer was slowing down quite a bit, and I thought I'd take a chance on the drive upgrade first to see if that helped. The install was not that hard. I have a micro case, so only room for 1 hard drive. Thus I had to purchase a SATA to USB cable compatible with 2.5 inch drives. Hooked that up to my USB 3 port. Used Windows Computer Management to initialize the drive. Downloaded the free home version of Macrium Reflect to create a clone of my existing hard drive, which took a couple of hours. Since my computer had a 3.5 hard drive, I did have to buy a tray to put the SSD in. Then swapped out the old hard drive in my case for the new SSD drive, and everything booted as expected. I did combine this with a memory upgrade from 4gb to 8gb at the same time. I have to say, these two upgrades have made my computer feel and act like a new, fast computer. Amazing results. I did some benchmark tests before and after. Bottom line, for about $100, I upgraded my computer's memory and drive to SSD, and now it's amazingly fast. Boots in about 10 seconds, versus 60 seconds before. Programs launch almost instantly. Highly recommended!

And, if you want to speed it up even more, ditch Windows and install Linux. This is the third one of these drive's I've bought. One's in the Dell Precision T5500 that I'm typing this review on, and the other two have gone into laptops. The last one I bought went into a friend's Lenovo laptop. He already had Linux Mint 19, but I dropped in this drive and fresh-installed Mint 20.2. He says booting up the laptop now is like turning on a light switch. I timed things before & after on this T5500. (24G Ram, 8 processors, etc. it's not a slouch) From a cold boot, opening Firefox, ready to type in the URL window, the old WD 7,200 RPM drive was a watching-paint-dry 52 seconds. (And, it's still in here spinning away, as a secondary backup drive) Now? It's THREE seconds. Opening Libra Office Writer and being able to start pounding out a letter to your aunt? Four seconds. It was almost a full minute to suck it all those bytes and cram them into the RAM on the old drive. I've waited a while to write this review, so they've all been running for a while now. The one in this T5500 is well over a year old now, (1st one I bought) and (knock on wood) hasn't had any issues at all. So far, this same model SSD drive boots up with no issues in a Dell T5500 work station, an HP Elitebook 8540W, and a Lenovo with an i5 processor. (I can't remember what model) I read reviews where some SSD's don't like certain machines, but not so far for me. UPDATE for 2023. I've now bought five of these drives. The last one I just bought, went into an HP with 8 gigs of RAM, onboard sound, video, etc. to give to a friend. Not a powerful machine by any means, but Linux Mint 20.3 boots up (including the time it takes to pound in the password) in 25 seconds. Launching Firefox in Brave and loading up BBC News takes about 3 seconds from a cold boot. They're thrilled with the machine, and think it's the fastest computer they've ever used. BTW, installing Linux Mint from a thumb-drive boot took barely 15 minutes. Installing an SSD is about the fastest upgrade you can do, especially with an older so-so computer.

Cloned my old boot SSD to this one after a lot of difficulty but in the process connected and disconnected it a lot and it still works fine. You will need to buy a ssd tray to mount in your case If your computer doesn't have one included as most are made for the bigger hdd. Will need mounting screws but most trays have them included. Also Sata and power cables too. Cloning a Boot drive: I'm just including this part incase you run into the same problems I did because none of the online solutions I found worked. I used this for Windows 7 with Macrium Reflect so it might work differently on Windows 10 with another software. I'm not an IT guy just someone who likes to mess around with computers so no guarantees it works for you but It did for me. If you don't already have a cloning software you can download Macrium Reflect it is free. 1) Connect the new drive and go into the windows search bar and search for Run and then enter diskmgmt.msc, it should show all the drives and you can find the one you just connected and if it isn't popping up in my computer you can see if it has been given a letter like C drive. If not right click and give it a letter. Sometimes the old boot drive will have 2 partitions. One labeled System Reserved and a regular one. Both will cloned but sometimes all are include in one partition. If you look in diskmgmt it will say Active, Boot, Crash Dump,etc. Under the partition that is used to Boot from. 2) After that is done open up the cloning program and clone. Once that is done go back into diskmgmt and right click on the partition to mark it as active. Now this is where it goes wrong sometimes. Turn off the computer and disconnect the old drive and when the computer starts look for which key you have to press to enter the Bios or Uefi settings so you can change the boot order. Sometimes the computer will just go through every drive by default but it's better if you go and find the drive you want it to boot from first which will be your new ssd. Now hopefully it works and starts and everything is good. If not like on mine you will have to move on to the next step. Now my problem was not because it was a bad boot record or file system compatibility issue. I tried all of those and there are guides for that. But my problem was that Windows would only recognize the System reserved on my new drive as being the place to boot from but not the regular partition. It would still only boot from the old partition on my old drive because it was labeled as Boot, Crash Dump etc. Marking it as Active didn't help because as far as I could figure out those labels were only placed when Windows was installed on the system and even without the old drive connected diskmgmt would not label it so. 1) You will need a Windows install USB or disc. If you don't have one you can try making a recovery disc from your old drive but I have not tried that way so I'm not sure if it will work. If that doesn't work try and find a torrent for your version of Windows. Don't worry about getting a product key or installing a crack you just need it to install Windows. Once you clone it will go back to your original install. 2) Format the new SSD. You may have to go unmark it as Active and switch the boot order back so that it will boot off your old drive. If like mine and it only recognized the System reserved on the new ssd it won't let you format until it goes back to recognizing the old drive. You may have to restart after marking it as inactive. Once you do that and format get a usb and download a program that will search for drivers as a clean install of windows might not have drivers and not let you connect to the internet. You can find one or if you want go to Windows on your old drive from my computer and look for Program files and copy the Macrium folder. Inside there should be a Application that is named Reflect and will launch the program without having to download on the new drive. If you used another program just put the install files into the USB. 3) Once formatted and you have the files on a USB disconnect all the drives except your new one and put in the Windows install CD or USB and install it on the drive. Once that is done and your on the windows homepage turn off the computer and plug in the old boot drive and see if it's boots to the new install of windows. If it doesn't fix the boot order. 4) Now open the cloning software and try cloning to the new drive now from the old one. If you are using Macrium it should say something about it can't do it and will need to restart and use Windows PE environment. Say yes and let it restart. It has to do this because unlike before where you tried cloning from the working drive to the new one now you are cloning to the working drive and it can't run windows and rewrite it at the same time. Let it load and then open the cloning software again and now it should clone and the partition will have the right labels as it was already marked so from it installing windows and all your old files should be there. If everything works now you should see that only the cloned part of the drive is popping up on my computer and all the extra space is unallocated in diskmgmt. Right click on the regular partition if your has 2 and choose to extend volume. Keep clicking yes and the extra space will be added. Sorry if this isn't as clear and concise as I would have liked but I found a lot of people with a similar problem after cloning a Boot drive and none of the articles or forums helped.

The Dell 15 3565 was purchased in 2018 as a backup computer and has been used to digitize music and stream videos. It is a low-end, entry-level product, but very slow for most productivity applications running on Windows 10 (e.g., MS Office). Based on what I had heard and experienced with similar machines, I purchased the WD Blue 500 GB SSD as an experiment to see if speed could be improved. A Sabrent 2.5”-SATA-HD-to USB-3.0 adapter cable was also purchased at the same time to clone the new WD SDD. The original Toshiba 5400-rpm, 500-GB HDD was cloned using the Acronis WD version software. Some points: 1. Ensure you have the 2020 version of Acronis WD. My initial download was the 2016 version, which did not recognize the WD SDD. After the 2020 version was installed, cloning went on without a problem using the default settings. It took about an hour to clone approximately 160 GB of disk content. 2. Although Windows recognized the Sabrent cable as an external device, Windows Explorer would not recognize any content on the WD SDD before or after cloning. This caused some concern, although Acronis did report successful cloning. As a potential Plan B in case the cloning process did not work, I used the Dell backup routine to create a bootable thumb drive to install Windows on the new WD SDD. 3. As part of my preparation, I printed out and studied applicable portions of the Dell service manual with the necessary disassembly procedures to get to the HDD. I also labeled old pill bottles to store the various size screws that came off of the computer at each step during disassembly. Bottom line: After all the preparation and about an hour of actual disassembly, installation, and reassembly, the moment of truth came to reboot the computer. Success. The computer booted to Windows right away without incident. After completing a few Windows updates and allowing the software to settle in, the increase in speed was quite apparent – well worth the effort and expense. Without precise laboratory measurements, I would say the Dell is roughly comparable to my more powerful desktop and laptop, which are still running on HDDs. In short – no stalls or slow app loads.

This gets five stars for what it is, a basic and reliable SSD at a reasonable price. I am sure there are SSDs that are just as good that cost less, but I like WD products. I used this SSD for storage and not for the operating system since I wanted something much faster than that (an NVMe). I don't worry about doing a lot of writes to this drive, because that was the intended purpose. Nothing on it is permanent storage and this SSD can fail without causing me much, if any grief.

I got this SSD HD to replace and improve my daughters HP Pavilion Laptop (The original HD was a Segate 5400rpm 500GB SATA II Traditional Laptop HD) the performance issues that this laptop had been having which was mainly due to the growing resource demands over the years from the newer Windows Operating Systems (Going from Windows 7 to Windows 10) and the newer requirements from the current software as well. Needless to say very infuriating for someone who is trying to get her school work done. PROS: Nothing but Praise CONS: Absolutely None Recommended Additional Software and Tools to perform the Hard Drive upgrade with: - (Needed, unless your reloading the OS from Scratch) Use Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition (Just do a Google Search to find) to clone your Old hard drive to the New One. It's an easy download that will install into your existing hard drive to make an exact clone to your New One. Best part the Free Edition does not cost a dime. - (Needed, unless your cloning a Desktop then Optional) Use this USB to SATA Drive connection cable Sabrent USB 3.0 to SSD / 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive Adapter [Optimized For SSD, Support UASP SATA III] (EC-SSHD) for only $10 to clone the new drive with. Of course if it is for a Desktop this will not be needed but for 95% of the Laptops out there it's a must! - (Optional, if you already have a similar tool set) If your changing the hard drive out of these newer Laptops (within the Last 4 years) I would buy this tool kit Soucolor 78 in 1 Precision Screwdriver Set, Magnetic Driver Kit, Repair Tool Kits with Portable Case for iPad, iPhone, Tablets, Laptops, PC, Smartphones, Watches, Electronics Disassembly to access the Hard Drive, especially for those needing a plastic pry tool, can't go wrong for $20. Once I installed the new SSD the difference was literally night and day, the boot up from Bios to Operating System (Windows 10) was almost literally instantaneous (I would say give or take 5 to 10 seconds), the response time on applications and any action in general was also instantaneous. Only other recommendation I would make is to make sure the BIOS on your laptop/PC is current so there are no compatibility issues with the SSD. Please NOTE: This HD is approximately $50 cheaper than it's predecessor Western Digital WD Blue SSD interne 500 Go - SATA 6 Gbit/s 2,5" but has the same excellent results. Overall I could not be happier, This will unfortunately will be that last upgrade that I will be able to do this Laptop (See the system system specs below). I would highly recommend this SSD Hard Drive for all older PC performance related problems. Specs: HP Pavilion Laptop (June 2012) OS: Windows 10 Pro Processor: AMD X6 @ 1.40 GHz (4 Cores) RAM: 8 GB (Max Capacity) Hard Drive: 500GB WD-Blue 3D NAND SSD (Replaced original Segate 500GB 5400RPM SATA Drive) Video: AMD Radeon graphics card (HDMI & VGA) Display: 1920 X 1080p 17.3 inch Screen Internal NIC: 100MB WiFi NIC: Internal Intel Centrino Dual Band/USB LB1 AC600 Dual Band USB Dongle (5 ghz) USB Ports: 3 X USB 2.0 Ports ROM: DVD/CD Burner